Wind energy – the future or a blot on the landscape, Wexford Soapbox 8th November, 2010

Tomorrow I travel to Brussels with Monica as a guest of Nessa Childers MEP to visit the European Parliament. This is a prize for placing second in Wexford Soapbox 3 years ago. This was my speech. The content is still relevant.

Windmills are great machines – for decapitating migrating swans and transferring money from electricity customers to investors and land owners.  But, ladies and gentlemen, they are bad machines for generating electricity.  A recent study showed that the UK installed wind capacity of 4 gigawatts generated on average just 368 MW in 2009, or 9.2%.  And this power is only generated when the wind blows at the right speed.  So in addition to the 4GW of wind capacity you also have to have 4GW of conventional power stations that can be turned on on demand when the wind does not blow.  These power stations are much more costly and inefficient than conventional base power stations that generate 24/7.  So you may actually use MORE fossil fuel if you have a large amount of wind generating capacity than if you had only fossil fuel stations.  Large scale wind generation will not be feasible until cost effective electricity storage is developed.

We embarked on this foolish path to build windmills without electricity storage because of a belief in anthropomorphic (man made) global warming or climate change.  This belief, held with a religious fervour by environmentalists, many NGO’s, and some scientists, is that carbon dioxide, a plant fertiliser emitted to the atmosphere when we breath or burn coal is going to cause catastrophic warming of the Earth.  This belief is then exploited by other scientists and politicians to harvest research money and carbon taxes.  Like the Lisbon treaty nearly 100% of politicians unquestioningly support this belief while many of the public are sceptical.  The Dáil committee on climate change never hears the other side.  Climate change is supported as fervently by Simon ‘only electric cars in 2020’ Coveney and Liz ‘Wear a coat indoors if you’re cold’ McManus as it is by the government parties. 

However, it is now clear that climate change is not the big bogey sold by alarmists.  The release of emails last November know as climategate, errors in reports from the UN panel on climate change, a cold winter and a steady stream of sceptical evidence has caused a major decline in public concern.  But it will leave a costly legacy – carbon taxes and alternative energy subsidies will not be quickly reversed by politicians who will not wish to show how gullible they were. And Windmills on the hill tops - giant revolving 3 pronged crosses will remain on the hills for years as monuments to the folly of warmism, with bird sacrifices to the green Earth god littered at their feet.

Global Warming. Is the glass half full or half empty?

New video.  Full text below.

The vast majority of climate scientists and educated observers, perhaps 97-98%, agree that CO₂ in the atmosphere warms the globe. The science is clear and well understood. Bonds in the carbon dioxide molecules absorb radiated hear and warm up. This warms the atmosphere and hence the Earth’s surface. The amount of warming directly attributable to this absorption of infrared radiation is 1C for a doubling of CO₂ levels from 290 ppm. This is generally agreed by both climate scientists who are support Kyoto and by sceptical climate scientists.

It is well accepted that 1°C warming is good. Plants grow better in the warmer conditions. Increased CO₂ in the atmosphere also improves plant growth. Some farmers artificially increase CO₂ concentrations in their greenhouses. The Sahel region on the edge of the Sahara is becoming greener as a result of increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

So if 1°C of warming is good and doubling CO₂ will warm the Earth by 1°C, why do so many tell us we have to cut our carbon emissions? It depends on how you see your glass – is it half full or half empty. Look at this glass, it contains 50% of its maximum capacity. It is both half full and half empty. How you choose to see it is your choice.

For some the glass is half full. Some people see carbon emissions as a good thing. Carbon that has been trapped under the ground for millions of years is being released. Plant photosynthetic processes evolved when CO₂ levels were perhaps 10 times higher than they are today. As we release this carbon to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels we are benefitting both from increased plant productivity at absorbing the sun’s energy and the economic benefit that comes from using the energy that we get by burning carbon. Burning fossil fuels is a win-win situation.

But many people choose to see the glass as half empty. They see this increased CO₂ concentration and the associated warming as a problem. They tell us that the small amount of warming caused by CO₂ absorption of radiated heat will be amplified by other effects. These effects may cause catastrophic runaway global warming of more than 2 degrees, maybe 3, 4 or 5°C. But the mechanisms that are supposed to cause this warming are speculative. The models are not supported by fact. Global temperatures have not risen for 17 years despite increasing CO₂ in the atmosphere. It is clear that runaway warming is not occurring. They now call it climate change and blame it for every adverse weather event. They ignore the facts that the climate has always changed and there were adverse weather events before we started to emit CO₂. 

To counter this warming threat they are telling us that we have to cut our fossil fuel usage. We have to use expensive and unreliable alternative energy. We have to cover our hills and seashores with windmills. We have to clear cut old forests and jungles to burn the wood and grow oil palms. We have to burn food and drink as biofuel. We have to pay carbon taxes on coal, oil and natural gas to heat our houses in winter. We have to make sacrifices. We have to make sacrifices to limit the amount of plant fertiliser we put into the air.

So how do you see the world? Is your glass half full or half empty? Should we enjoy the benefit of reliable carbon based fuel which increases the amount of plant fertiliser in the atmosphere and helps prevent a return of an ice age? Or should we sacrifice our economy to prevent a non-problem from occurring?  Me? … My glass is half full … or rather it was. Cheers and enjoy life. Burn carbon without guilt.

A simple explanation of global warming and why it is good and why the alarmists are wrong

I found a great summary of Climate Change issue on a blog response by Mike Haseler. It says the same as I do only in other words.

If you want to understand global warming here it is in a nutshell:

CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The scientific consensus is that doubling its level as is expected over the next century will cause about 1C of warming. Most people accept that 1C warming will be BENEFICIAL because CO2 is a plant food and all plants benefit from high levels of CO2 and warming is generally beneficial particularly in northern areas like Britain (why on earth do we have green houses if not to benefit from the added warmth?)

This is the science. This is what the "consensus" is about. It is about a 1C of warming which is beneficial. The big lie is that this dispute is not about the greenhouse effect of CO2. It is about the massive scaling up of this effect by untried untested theories. These theories about added warming are introduced because the CO2 greenhouse effect cannot explain all the changes we saw in the 20th century.

The alarmist side say "it must somehow be due to CO2". This is bogus science! If anyone did it in any other subject those involved would get kicked out of the subject for talking such nonsense. But not climate "science". Here they create models which are little more than taking the recent rise (1970-2000), drawing a line through the trend and projecting it forward a hundred years and proclaiming the end of the world. But as we all know this approach crashed and burnt as it stopped warming around the turn of the century.

On the sceptic side we say: "the 1970-2000 increase could be due to natural climate variation". And we know this because before the measured increase in CO2 we saw the same rise in temperature over the same three decade period from 1910 to 1940 as we saw during the period of concern (1970-2000). So if the first period was due to natural climate variation then this natural variation is more than large enough to explain the change from 1970 to 2000.

So on the one side with have bogus science being pushed by the alarmists. On the other we have people asking that we base our predictions on the real science of the CO2 greenhouse effect which suggests beneficial warming of about 1C over the next century.